Hari's Rainbow-colored World

 

Essay 57. HARI'S RAINBOW-COLORED WORLD

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol 

One hundred fifteen years after Pablo Picasso created the proto-cubist painting, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon",  Cubism continues to cast its spell on the present generation of artists. Cubism, was one of the pioneering styles that eschew depicting natural appearance in art, the dictum propounded by Picasso when he declared that "Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing." Filipino artists, painters and sculptors alike, took to the new style. Vicente Manansala, after his French sojourn, switched style and adopted Cubism, and abandoned for good the Botong Francisco style that had inspired him for some time. 

Many Filipino painters followed Manansala's lead. Among them was the late Oscar Zalameda. Zalameda is Hari's lodestar. Both of them are natives of Lucban, Quezon. It is perhaps because of their shared affinity for that place why Hari adopted Zalameda's style of Cubism, with its thorough simplification of forms and its tendency to use the full range of colors of the rainbow.

Frank Hari was born on May 12, 1964, to Bautista and Nasaria Hari. Hari recalled that he began drawing when he was in grade three. He claimed that no one had encouraged him, he being the only one in his family who'd manifested an inclination for art making. His family though was supportive of his dream and allowed him to enroll at the Philippine Women's University (PWU) where he received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts major in painting. 

Hari's first job after graduation was as painter of antique cabinets and sculptures at Nostalgia Inc., in San Pedro, Laguna. After his stint there, Hari worked full time as a painter, accepting painting commissions not only from local clients but also from those abroad, contributing Christmas card designs for Hallmark's Leukemic Indigent Fund Project (L.I.F.E ), and joining art competitions. Hari had had his share of prizes from art competitions, placing second in a landscape painting contest in PWU, and being among the finalists in the 2015 GSIS Nationwide Art Competition and the 2017 Art Association of the Philippines annual on-the-spot painting competition.

Before immersing himself in Cubism, Hari was a realist painter first. He had joined several group exhibitions and had exhibited solo once in the GSIS Museum on December 2018. Titled, "Colors of Christmas", the paintings in this show are depictions of age-old Filipino traditions like "karoling" and "pamamasko" - which shows children visiting the house of their godparents on Christmas day and pressing their godparents' hands to their foreheads as a gesture of respect. Other typical Filipino themes that Hari likes to portray are harvest scenes and images of the mother and child.

Hari sees the Philippine condition, especially that obtaining in the countryside, with  optimistic eyes, as can be gleaned from his use of festive colors. He segmented his figures in triangles using colors that range from red, to yellow, to blue, and all the colors in between. Hari is not intimidated by colors. He thrives on them. Hari's colorful paintings always exude the aura of happiness and celebration, and that's maybe the reason why Hallmark invited him again and again to join the august company of established painters, like Manny Baldemor, Romeo Gutierrez, Angel Cacnio, and Remy Boquiren, who were frequent contributors of designs for Hallmark's L.I.F.E. Christmas card project. Hari's art journey is a fruitful one indeed, the culmination of which is his receiving the "Natatanging Lucbanin sa Larangan ng Sining" award granted him by the Municipal Government of Lucban last August 2021.